MOSCOW, September 29. /TASS/. NATO member countries conducted drills in July using deep-sea equipment near the Nord Streams leaks site, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Thursday.

"In July, there were NATO drills with the use of deep-sea equipment in the area of the island of Bornholm," she said.

Zakharova also stressed that the region was crammed with NATO infrastructure.

On Tuesday, the Nord Stream AG company reported that three threads of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 offshore gas pipelines had suffered unprecedented damage on Monday. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Moscow was "deeply concerned about the news" and did not rule out that the pipelines’ operation could have been disrupted by an act of sabotage. Swedish seismologists later reported that two explosions had been recorded along the Nord Stream pipelines on Monday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen slammed the incidents as sabotage, pointing out that any "deliberate disruption of the European energy infrastructure is unacceptable and will lead to the strongest possible response". On Thursday, the Swedish Coast Guard discovered another gas leak from the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.